Audio Video News

Belkin: You Get What You Pay For

SV Staff  |  Jan 20, 2009

Have you ever wondered why someone would take time to write an online review of a product that rivals the depth and detail of a professional review? Some folks just feel passionately about their new purchase.  However, there is a dark side.

It's been revealed that the Amazon.com sales rep for Belkin products has been paying for fake reviews of Belkin products, using Mechanical Turk.  The very next day, Mark Reynoso, president of Belkin issued an apology stating that this was an isolated incident. 

The question is, if Belkin is doing it, who else is? I'll glance at the reviews at Amazon, but still come to a source like Sound & Vision for the real reviews.  —Leslie Shapiro

Keep reading for the complete apology letter from Mark Reynoso, president of Belkin.

Belkin has always held itself to the highest standards of corporate ethics and its employees to the highest standards of personal integrity. Similarly, we support our online user community in discussion and reviews of our products, whether the commentary is good or bad. So, it was with great surprise and dismay when we discovered that one of our employees may have posted a number of queries on the Amazon Mechanical Turk website inviting users to post positive reviews of Belkin products in exchange for payment.

Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this. We know that people look to online user reviews for unbiased opinions from fellow users and instances like this challenge the implicit trust that is placed in this interaction. We regard our responsibility to our user community as sacred, and we are extremely sorry that this happened.

We want to stress that this is an isolated incident and to re-instill trust with you, we have taken the following courses of action:

- We've acted swiftly to remove all associated postings from the Mechanical Turk system.


- We're working closely with our online channel partners to ensure that any reviews that may have been placed due to these postings have been removed.

It's also important to recognize that our retail partners had no knowledge of, or participation in, these postings.

Once again, we apologize for this occurrence, and we will work earnestly to regain the trust we have lost.

Sincerely,

Mark Reynoso


President, Belkin

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